Doesn't take very long to be reminded of the issues facing nuclear power. Clearly Japan is the bashing boy after Fukushima, but honestly how assured can we be that nuclear power is truly safe? The spate of incidents are shocking. https://www.rt.com/news/396358-fukushimas-radioactive-water-released-ocean/ Even the US is guilty of the same problems and these issues go the world around, pretty much commonplace regardless of the engineering.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-leaks-found-at-75-of-us-nuke-sites/
Why? Isn't there an ingenious engineering solution that can solve the problem of nuclear waste? The true answer is that it is all about economics. Nuclear plants have poor economics because of the investment needed, the costs of disposal, the safety requirements that even though they're never fully funded are still prohibitively expensive. Not least to say the notorious inflexibility of its output. Stories abound of how output from nuclear plants are used to pump water into artificial dams in the wee hours to convert back into hydroeletric power because plants are just not able to throttle back production when it's not needed. So next time you see pretty charts of how cheap nuclear power is, ask who is paying for all that infra, and what are their actual useful power produced and who's paying for all that disposal? https://qz.com/94817/the-real-reason-to-fight-nuclear-power-has-nothing-to-do-with-health-risks/
Beyond that, health for nuclear power seems like an entire mess. Conflicts of interest abound, as somehow nuclear health belongs under the purview of IAEA which is responsible for overseeing nuclear plants! Talk about regulatory capture! Fundamentally, the industry created nuclear waste with no solutions. Even the best possible solution requires decades of spent fuel being stored above ground before we can even hit deep storage. And the containers supposed to store spent fuel that will be radioactive for thousands of years are only able to survive decades. Do we seriously think the industry will pay to replace these containers 60-90 years down the road? How much worse will the economics then? Maybe the bankrupty of Toshiba's nuclear arm (one of the largest in the world after they bought westinghouse) will tell. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-westinghouse-nucle-idUSKBN17Y0CQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool
Why then the investment in nuclear and why do these conflicts of interests remain? The most honest answer we have comes from a former defence minister from Japan, Satoshi Morimoto who shared that fundamentally nuclear is about deterrent and defence. Remember that next time your government tries so hard to push nuclear. It could explain a lot. http://www.sify.com/news/japan-sees-nuclear-power-plants-as-powerful-deterrent-against-foreign-attacks-news-international-mjgp4wgbcahsi.html
